This coming Tuesday, the new album by RJD2, “The Third Hand,” drops on XL. Those familiar with his work from his Definitive Jux albums should be surprised. The sampler hero has changed his approach. For one thing, he is singing. What? DJs aren’t supposed to sing! Thank heavens RJ has a pleasant voice. “The Third Hand” is actually quite exciting, and he has not slacked off in the production department in creating his rock moment. RJD2 has forever been compared to DJ Shadow, so it is fortunate here that he has now done a style far better than his predescessor. Where the rock cuts on Shadow’s “Outsider” album were what really sunk it into sub-Coldplay mediocrity (it wasn’t the quite charming hyphy cuts), RJD2 proves to be quite adept at the conventional songwriter medium. And don’t let me fool you with all this “rock” talk, either, as many of the tracks here are quite funky, and there are truly wonderful instrumentals to be had here betwixt the voice unveiling.

external links
RJD2’s website
XL
RJD2’s MySpace

internal links
RTR’s The Third Hand Review

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under Hype, new releases. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.